FCC’s new app will need your help to quantify mobile broadband speed

The commission will hear a presentation on its Android app next Thursday.

Late last week, the FCC published the agenda for its commission meeting next week—the first with newly-appointed chairman Tom Wheeler at the helm. In that agenda, the FCC said it would hear a presentation on the new FCC Speed Test App for Android. The organization plans to make this app public in the hopes that smartphone users will measure their data speeds and send the results back to the FCC to compile and analyze the results.

This isn't the first speed test app that the FCC has been a part of, but it will be the first time the FCC has made efforts to crowdsource information on carrier speeds. (The author remembers using an old app made by a developer called Ookla that had the FCC's logo emblazoned on it back in 2011 when she was employed at PC World. It appears that the “FCC-approval” branding was dropped from that app in the years since.)

The new app will likely function much like the old one, measuring upload speeds, download speeds, and latency for all major carriers. TheWall Street Journalreports that the commission has the cooperation of all four major carriers as well as the wireless trade association CTIA. “Given the paucity of information on mobile broadband availability and prices, this type of data collection seems like the first step toward evaluating whether Americans are getting what they pay for from their carriers in terms of mobile data speeds,” writes the WSJ.

An FAQ for the app on the FCC's site incorrectly states that it will be available in “late spring 2013” and urges interested parties to sign up to get updates on the app's release. You can still sign up though, and it seems like the commission is moving ahead now—better late than never.

29 Reader Comments

One thing I have noticed with all these so called speed test, is they only measure for a short time. If any of you paid attention to the advertisements, then you know the advertised sped is for the first 12 seconds or something similar to that. How about a app the measures the sustain speed over time.

Speed test.net will claim I am getting 20 to 30 Mbps down and 9 to 12 Mbps up. When I download updates or games through steam, I see 2.2 Mbps. When uploading to various sources I never see anything more than 330 kbps. And yet I have trouble viewing netflix or YouTube videos, no matter what PC I decide to use.

These speed test apps are inaccurate. The first 12 seconds is not enough information.

It occurs to me that there is little to prevent broadband operators - mobile or otherwise - from gaming these tests. Similar to have Nvidia and ATI used to employ scripts in their drivers to cut large sections of nonviewable areas in common benchmark tests. Indeed these are likely even easier to game: coding akin to: don't throttle bandwidth when accessing this site. I have FIOS with supposedly tremendous throughput (for American broadband), but I frequently have problems streaming YouTube content due to Verizon's gamesmanship on the backend (Netflix is not,currently, problematic).

One thing I have noticed with all these so called speed test, is they only measure for a short time. If any of you paid attention to the advertisements, then you know the advertised sped is for the first 12 seconds or something similar to that. How about a app the measures the sustain speed over time.

Speed test.net will claim I am getting 20 to 30 Mbps down and 9 to 12 Mbps up. When I download updates or games through steam, I see 2.2 Mbps. When uploading to various sources I never see anything more than 330 kbps. And yet I have trouble viewing netflix or YouTube videos, no matter what PC I decide to use.

These speed test apps are inaccurate. The first 12 seconds is not enough information.

You also forget that the available bandwidth to the hosting servers of those services also influences your download and upload times. Companies regularly limit bandwidth for each client as to not overwhelm their connections and block out other clients.

It's not just mobile broadband performance that the FCC would like to quantify. For several years they've had a project, still ongoing, to analyze wired broadband provider performance. The FCC teamed up with a U.K. firm named SamKnows to implement it, and rather than use an "app" on PCs they delivered a "white box" Netgear router with custom firmware to do the monitoring and reporting. Participants get monthly reports of their broadband performance. I wish I'd better understood how to analyze the metrics from the beginning, because there were hints of a physical problem with the carrier's wires that went uncorrected for years (until I switched to a third party provider who caught the problem using the same last-mile wires).

It occurs to me that there is little to prevent broadband operators - mobile or otherwise - from gaming these tests. Similar to have Nvidia and ATI used to employ scripts in their drivers to cut large sections of nonviewable areas in common benchmark tests. Indeed these are likely even easier to game: coding akin to: don't throttle bandwidth when accessing this site. I have FIOS with supposedly tremendous throughput (for American broadband), but I frequently have problems streaming YouTube content due to Verizon's gamesmanship on the backend (Netflix is not,currently, problematic).

At least on the wired side, I strongly suspect SuddenLink does this. My 'net will run like cold molasses across multiple sources, but speedtest.net will report slightly over rated speeds.

I have one of the FCC 'SamKnows' routers and it calls home about every two hours for an extensive test of up/down. They are collecting results from about 10,000 of these 'white box' routers. The results indicate that most of the time Comcast (CT) is pretty good but for 2 or so hours a month it is awful. When these awful moments occur appears to be random. The SamKnows and SpeedTest results are about the same but the SamKnows tests speed as a function of packet size, emulates streaming etc

If it's not peer-to-peer and fully disguised (encrypted) I don't see how this will help. As others have pointed out, ISPs can easily just prioritize traffic to and from the test servers, and possibly matching the "signature" of the traffic. To make it work, it ought to function like BitTorrent or Napster with fully encrypted traffic between a multitude of hosts. Results could then be averaged per host and reported.

One thing I have noticed with all these so called speed test, is they only measure for a short time. If any of you paid attention to the advertisements, then you know the advertised sped is for the first 12 seconds or something similar to that. How about a app the measures the sustain speed over time.

Speed test.net will claim I am getting 20 to 30 Mbps down and 9 to 12 Mbps up. When I download updates or games through steam, I see 2.2 Mbps. When uploading to various sources I never see anything more than 330 kbps. And yet I have trouble viewing netflix or YouTube videos, no matter what PC I decide to use.

These speed test apps are inaccurate. The first 12 seconds is not enough information.

Actually Netflix knows everything about various ISPs, but the question is how to divulge the data without being sued by the losers. It is like that Google paper on hard drive reliability that came out a few years ago. They know exactly the reliability of various drive manufacturers, but can't risk the shitstorm if they publish the data.

You can't regulate if you can't prove how crappy they are being. If you can quantify how bad they are compared to what they advertise you build a much better case against them. It's almost like Lost Prevention in your local department store. They don't stop you when you steal one thing, they build a case against you and then strike you with a hammer.

The speed of my mobile network is trivial to me, the costs of data and limits on it are a much more relevant question. How about we assume that were not getting what we pay for and instead crowdsource info on how bad were getting killed with broadband, oh yeah because that information has already been compiled and the issue Is lack of options...then maybe start proposing solutions to problems instead of just observing them.

How about the FCC simply stop this foolishness to pacify the public with shiny bobbles and trinkets like speed tests and instead actually make an ISP provide the speeds they advertise and put a stop to this 'up to' crap, and have the FCC stop the monopoly crap and allow communities/cities/towns to use or build or operate any broadband 'internet providing' service/capability they choose even if a company already monopolizes the area.

Its like the FCC convened and addressed the issue with "hmmmm ... ISP's are not providing the speeds they market and sell to the public. The public is upset about it and that's a problem, what to do, oh my what to do....hey, I know, lets spend some tax payer dollars to put out a speed measurement app to solve the problem."

You can't regulate if you can't prove how crappy they are being. If you can quantify how bad they are compared to what they advertise you build a much better case against them. It's almost like Lost Prevention in your local department store. They don't stop you when you steal one thing, they build a case against you and then strike you with a hammer.

I agree with this, but I agree that this app will likely be easily gamed. I'm very hesitant about letting the FCC regulate ISPs in any way. I rather deal with shady operators than government intrusion. However, It would be extremely valuable if the FCC could develop an app that was not easily gamed that would enable them to create an authoritative list of true ISP speeds and reliability. Now, instead of companies doing something because the FCC forced them to do it, they will do things because they'll lose customers otherwise.

You can't regulate if you can't prove how crappy they are being. If you can quantify how bad they are compared to what they advertise you build a much better case against them. It's almost like Lost Prevention in your local department store. They don't stop you when you steal one thing, they build a case against you and then strike you with a hammer.

I agree with this, but I agree that this app will likely be easily gamed. I'm very hesitant about letting the FCC regulate ISPs in any way. I rather deal with shady operators than government intrusion. However, It would be extremely valuable if the FCC could develop an app that was not easily gamed that would enable them to create an authoritative list of true ISP speeds and reliability. Now, instead of companies doing something because the FCC forced them to do it, they will do things because they'll lose customers otherwise.

Exactly - we don't need the government to intrude and take care of this issue, the free market will definitely solve this problem as soon as customers have the information they need to decide which is the best ISP, then they can switch to the best provider in their area... wait a second... I detect a flaw in this idea.

One thing I have noticed with all these so called speed test, is they only measure for a short time. If any of you paid attention to the advertisements, then you know the advertised sped is for the first 12 seconds or something similar to that. How about a app the measures the sustain speed over time.

Speed test.net will claim I am getting 20 to 30 Mbps down and 9 to 12 Mbps up. When I download updates or games through steam, I see 2.2 Mbps. When uploading to various sources I never see anything more than 330 kbps. And yet I have trouble viewing netflix or YouTube videos, no matter what PC I decide to use.

These speed test apps are inaccurate. The first 12 seconds is not enough information.

You're right, 12 seconds of speed testing isn't exactly a good picture of how fast your connection is overall, but in many cases you're working with constrained bandwidth. When you perform a speed test, regardless of how the data is measured, you're basically sending data through your connection and measuring how long it takes for a certain amount to get there. In order to measure that your connection downloads at 20Mbps for 12 seconds, you have to download 20Mbps for a total of 12 seconds. That's 240Mb (or 30MB). That might not sound like a lot, but if you're constantly pegging a 20Mbps connection to see the sustained download speed, you'll burn through 216GB per day of data. In this world of data caps, even on a home connection that's unacceptable, and that's not even including uploading.

Your second point about speed disparity... are you aware of the difference between a megabit and a megabyte? Your connection is rated in megabits per second (such as 20Mbps), but your downloads in your browser and other applications are typically measured in megabytes per second. There are 8 bits in a byte, so your 20Mbps connection actually only has a top speed of around 2.5MBps. I'm assuming that you're simply mistyping the MBps (megaBYTES per second) and Mbps (megaBITS per second). 2Mbps is painfully slow (275KB/s). Your upload speeds are a little more off, but ISPs are always a little less kind to uploading than downloading because of peering agreements with other networks.

One thing I have noticed with all these so called speed test, is they only measure for a short time. If any of you paid attention to the advertisements, then you know the advertised sped is for the first 12 seconds or something similar to that. How about a app the measures the sustain speed over time.

Speed test.net will claim I am getting 20 to 30 Mbps down and 9 to 12 Mbps up. When I download updates or games through steam, I see 2.2 Mbps. When uploading to various sources I never see anything more than 330 kbps. And yet I have trouble viewing netflix or YouTube videos, no matter what PC I decide to use.

These speed test apps are inaccurate. The first 12 seconds is not enough information.

You're confusing speed tests with network moniitors. The apps don't measure speed by sampling the network usage; they don't "monitor". Like Ookla, they run an a realtime test by sending a receiving data through the internet connection. A sustained test of this type would use up your internet for the duration of its use.

In short, how long would you like to be without internet service while that longer test runs?

I wonder how long it will be before the carriers understand the traffic pattern and put QoS rules in place to game it. If the carriers had anything to do with it then app likely has a set of specific targets it measures speed against and if thats the case then the app is worthless, nothing more than a way for the carriers to artificially pump up their numbers.

This system WILL be gamed. Now if they make the application based off of bittorent (this will never happen), then you could possibly test both the upload and download quite easily with anyone that is online. Of course there is no guarantee that there will be enough people online at one point in time for it to truly work, but you could have certain dedicated servers to help with that issue. But then again, there lies the ability for the ISPs to game the system...

How about the FCC simply stop this foolishness to pacify the public with shiny bobbles and trinkets like speed tests and instead actually make an ISP provide the speeds they advertise and put a stop to this 'up to' crap, and have the FCC stop the monopoly crap and allow communities/cities/towns to use or build or operate any broadband 'internet providing' service/capability they choose even if a company already monopolizes the area.

The only thing stopping communities/cities/towns to build or operate their own ISP is state and local laws, not the FCC. It's most certainly not exclusive franchise agreements, as those have been prohibited by FCC regulation for approx. 20 years.

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Its like the FCC convened and addressed the issue with "hmmmm ... ISP's are not providing the speeds they market and sell to the public. The public is upset about it and that's a problem, what to do, oh my what to do....hey, I know, lets spend some tax payer dollars to put out a speed measurement app to solve the problem."

The FCC is seriously constrained by a number of factors, including the certainty that any attempt to significantly increase regulation on ISPs will result in:1: congressional action aimed at barring the FCC from implementing this regulation (and likely removing regulatory power from the FCC). Such legislation may or may not ultimately succeed, but the FCC will be unable to proceed while that fight is going on.2: immediate lawsuits from every national ISP involved. These will also result in the FCC being unable to implement the regulations until the lawsuits are ultimately decided, which can take nearly a decade (which is plenty of time for ISPs to lobby congress to change the law, see problem #1).

I would love it if the FCC took the authority explicitly confirmed by the Brand X decision and chose to regulate ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the telecommunications act. The issues above make that action impossible, no, and for the foreseeable future. AFAICT, the only hope for sensible regulation is for enough data to be collected to motivate congressional action, or at least undercut any attempts to lobby congress to prevent FCC regulation.

They should save time&money and again partner with Ookla - their speed tests (mobile apps and http://www.speedtest.net/ ) are practically standard test ;p

On top of that, Ookla already have tests and data not only about speeds, but also about things like: - average download speeds per countries ( http://www.netindex.com/download/ )- "promise index" per country/ISP- how well real speed match speeds they advertise ( http://www.netindex.com/promise/)- "value index" per country - cost per Mbs , etc